AOL Free Phone calls ?

At the moment we use AOL as our ISP, and we are not in a contract as that ended well over a year ago.

Recently, approx January our monthly cost went from £14.99 to £21.99, We use very few of the Welcome page services, as were not interested in the marriage infidelity of footballers ,or Kate's hats and frocks etc etc etc
last week a gente man from somewhere abroad ( an agent for AOL) invited us to sign-up to an 18 months contract, with 2 months reduced to £9.99 and maybe a couple of free months, I don't recall exactly , he was very very very sad that we rejected his kind offer , and felt that he had to give us something FREE !

He was very determinded that we accept , and that we should transferr our Calls from BT to AOL and get them FREE, we would still pay BT Line rental but no more charges for calls , I inquired why couldn't he just reduce our monthly fee for Internet provision , sadly he didn't have that authority.

Was I wrong to reject that offer or is there a catch , and would it cause problems if we had phone errors of some kind etc and We had to go through AOL rather than BT , any informed advice would be welcome !

AOL are known for offering their broadband at £9.99 to long-term customers, generally those on market 3 exchanges who are in an LLU area though

Check on here http://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker and post back your results.

ALSO if your switching your calls to AOL I'd advise switching the line rental too. Otherwise your going to be paying BT for line rental, AOL for your calls, and it all gets a little messy.

I think you did the right thing to decline, it was not a very good offer IMO and has a very long contract.

Have a look at AOLs current packages to get an idea. http://www.aolbroadband.co.uk/

Finally if you have a problem with your phone line it will not cause problems being with AOL... Being with BT puts you at no advantage in terms of getting a fault resolved

Faults are handles by BT openreach - completely different to BT retail (the company that sell you bt phone and broadband). Openreach provide their services in the event of a fault to Talktalk, Sky, AOL, Orange etc... The guidelines are the same for all ISPs, they have 24 hours (I think) to resolve a voice fault. Openreach have to meet the same standards for all ISPs

The only difference is, if your line goes down, you contact AOL not BT. AOL will then send out BT openreach. If you stayed with BT you would contact BT retail who would sent out BT openreach. If you switched to sky, you would contact sky in the event of fault. You guessed it they would send out BT openreach... All in all no disadvantage, you get the same service in the end.

Final question, would you consider switching providers or are you happy?

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

I inquired why couldn't he just reduce our monthly fee for Internet provision , sadly he didn't have that authority.

Why don't you just get on to AOL's Retention Dept. and switch to their current Broadband Only package @ £15.30 pm with £10 off for 1st 3 months? They may be able to offer it cheaper still,

BT ADSL broadband availability
You are connected to the ********* telephone exchange.

ADSL is available in your area
Your exchange is also enabled for ADSL Max services
Your exchange is not yet enabled for ADSL2+ services
According to BT Wholesale, your phone line should be able to support a 2Mbps or greater ADSL connection.

Standard ADSL RAG results
You can receive 2Mbps ADSL
You can receive 1Mbps ADSL
You can receive 512kbps ADSL
You can receive 256kbps ADSL
However, there is another service on your phone line (e.g. ADSL, LLU, DACS, etc) that would prevent you from ordering a new ADSL connection.
» Your BT ADSL code is: GEGEGEC

» Matched result using the phone you provided
*********************************

We can currently get up to these speeds when not to many people are On-Line>>

Today 16:51 5372 kbps (672kB/s) 373 kbps (46.6kB/s) Share
Today 13:41 5641 kbps (705kB/s) 374 kbps (46.8kB/s) Share
Yesterday 21:43 1124 kbps (141kB/s) 373 kbps (46.6kB/s) Share

How do we get in contact with the Retenion Dept please ?
and I've seen the £15.30 pr month
but when it's mentioned it also says that for tecnical reasons it not available to us

Plusnet seems to be the best option just for broadband ,but when checking it only says Up to 2 mb check ?

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

but when it's mentioned it also says that for tecnical reasons it not available to us

That may be cuz you are not on LLU. Check here http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search to see if AOL is LLU'ed at your exchange. If you hadn't blatted it out, we could have checked

Also Post your router stats.

You've posted the wrong part of that site, I was looking to see what LLU providers are available in your area & also if there's AOL LLU

Can you pop back to http://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker

When it loads it will say "The following services are available in your location" and list them all... This is what I was looking for.

If AOL LLU is not available you'd pay slightly more.

EDIT: just noticed XRaySpeX has said pretty much the same thing

Also I agree if you can get router statistics that'd be great.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Tue 14-Jun-11 23:55:32)

We are not on LLU, thats why 'As i understand it ''we can't get the £15.30 service !

Are these the Stats you want;>>



System Up Time 36:55:51

Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoE 367129 563268 0 331 5702 35:44:53
LAN 10M/100M 351479 251830 0 2730 346 36:55:47
WLAN 11M/54M 319563 196158 0 3561 93 35:45:09

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 7008 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 40 db 10 db
Noise Margin 3 db 18 db

They are. With those statistics I'd expect to see a 8128 sync, or just slightly lower depending on interleaving. Your lines 1 meg below what I'd expect.

Looking at those stats I'd take a gamble that you're not plugging directly into the master socket and / or are using a DIY extension cable. Is this correct?

If you can't get LLU with AOL you can probably get it with someone else.

Can you pop to http://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker and post what it says under "the following services are available"

e.g mine says

"Summary of results

Congratulations, you are in a broadband enabled area.
Click here to compare packages available to you.


The following services are available in your location:
BT Wholesale ADSL
BT Wholesale ADSL Max
AOL LLU
O2 / Be LLU
TalkTalk (CPW) LLU
Sky Broadband / Easynet LLU
Tiscali LLU
Tiscali TV (via Tiscali LLU)
Orange LLU (Formerly Wanadoo)
Virgin Media (Cable)

Please select the options on the left for more information about broadband availability at your location."

This is what we want.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Wed 15-Jun-11 10:11:09)

Hi here is that info >
Congratulations, you are in a broadband enabled area.
Click here to compare packages available to you.
However, there is another service on your phone line (e.g. ADSL, LLU, DACS, etc) that would prevent you from ordering a new ADSL connection.
The following services are available in your location:

BT Wholesale ADSL
BT Wholesale ADSL Max
Please select the options on the left for more information about broadband availability at your location.

» Compare Broadband packages and prices at this postcode. Click here
» Confused about what's available to you? Click here

And you are correct the Router is connected with an extension cable (approx 4 meters ) to the Master socket in our loft , I connect my desk top to the wireless router with an short ethernet cable , a laptop connects wirelessly from another room , I can't work out how to re-connect Wirelessly my desktop , I think I had it that way once but read the connection was faster through a cable ? I may buy a longer ethernet cable and stick the router into the loft, thanks everyone , I'll try phoning AOL and ask for a reduction !

Well that's the reason you're not getting a good deal. Basically you don't have any LLU at the local exchange. The best offers are given to market 3 exchanges.

It also means AOL can't unbundle you to their cheaper packages.

You could probably scrape a little more from the line, but not a lot. Seems hardly worth messing about in the loft.

Just try and get the best deal you can. Keep us informed.